[BLOG-LIKE POSTING] On what to do about those aliens

[rfmcdonald]

Most of you have already read about Stephen Hawking's fears that, if we humans of Earth are ever contacted by extraterrestrials, we'll become as one with the Neanderthals.

According to a new documentary series he has made for the Discovery Channel : "If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans."

Hawking believes we would be well-advised to keep the volume down on our intergalactic chatter and do all we can to prevent any "nomadic" aliens moseying our way to take a look-see. Should they find us here tucked away in the inner reaches of the solar system, chances are they'd zap us all and pillage any resources they could get their hands on. Our own history, says Hawking, proves that first encounters very rarely begin: "Do take a seat. I'll pop the kettle on. Milk? Sugar?"

"Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach," says the theoretical physicist in Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking. "To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational. The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like."

Any alien who manages to reach Earth is, by definition, going to be far more advanced than us. Contrary to the claims of our own alien abductees, Hawking thinks it unlikely aliens will come all this way just to prod and poke us, take some samples, and pop back home in time for Show and Tell. Logic dictates that we will be the Stoke to their Chelsea.

The general theme of my blogged postings here concerning the likelihood of extraterrestrial life has been my hope that plenty of life's out there but there isn't much intelligent life--or, at least, that there aren't many technology-using intelligent species out there, at least not in our neighbourhood. GNXP's Razib Khan shares in my general concern. Whether a civilization would be as explicitly malevolent as the one featured in Greg Bear's 1987 The Forge of God or emotionally distanced as our use of chimpanzees as pets, laboratory animals, or food sources, a vastly more capable civilization could easily annihilate us.

Is there hope for us if we've been found? In his post "How do you say "realpolitik" in Klingon? ", Daniel Drezner suspects so, wondering if Hawking's recommended policy of hiding makes all that much sense. Yes, people have already started to try to make contact with extraterrestrial species, but they've done so not knowing anything. Mightn't it make sense to try to find out who, if anyone, is out there?

In space, does anybody understand the security dilemma? In international relations, there is at least full information about who the other actors are and where they are located. Clearly, we lack this kind of information about the known universe.

What Hawking is suggesting, however, is that efforts to collect such information would in and of themselves be dangerous, because they would announce our presence to others. He might be right. But shoiuldn't that risk be weighed against the cost of possessing a less robust early warning system? Isn't it in Earth's interests to enhance its intelligence-gathering activities?

And, if anyone out there is at an at all comparable level of productive capacity, mightn't we be able to exert a certain amount of agency? (The Romulans had their happy client planets, I'm sure. "And I, for one ...")

Centauri Dreams' perspective is the most hopeful in the classical optimistic sense.

My guess is that if there are other civilizations in the galaxy at the present time and if we at some point do encounter them, we’ll have a lot of trouble figuring out what they’re after, where they’re going, or what their motives are. Let’s hope such an encounter would be benign enough for us to learn, ponder and muse about the unfathomability of intelligence that has evolved elsewhere. Maybe we would be able to communicate enough to acquire deep knowledge, but I suspect the idea that there is an Encyclopedia Galactica out there to be studied is a chimera. The real Encyclopedia Galactica is more likely to be the one we build with science, one whose entries we refine with new observation and experiment.

A 2002 Roper poll taken in the US found that most Americans are ‘comfortable with and even excited about’ the discovery of an extraterrestrial culture. If the poll is accurate, Hawking’s ideas will probably strike most of its respondents as alarmist in tone, and reminiscent of a particular kind of bad science fiction movie. The problem is that we have only one example to work with, our own. We can see what has happened in the history of our species to cultures that have met superior technologies, but when it comes to encounters with entirely different beings, we have no template to fall back upon.

That leaves us guessing, a pleasurable human activity that is a long way from science. I think alien nomads in massive starships are a lot less likely than alien bacteria, but we press on with the search for both kinds of life and anything that may exist in between.

I prefer Centauri Dreams' vision.